Anniversary Address. 391 



to harvest the scanty crop. Provided with omnibuses we 

 left the town and its "grey abbey," and passed through 

 Newstead, noted for its numerous dials, as well as for its 

 Roman memories, on to Ravenswood. The day was cooler 

 than most days about this period, otherwise it would have 

 been intolerable. We noticed a hedge entirely composed of 

 the Barbery, and mildewed as is usual with that shrub. 

 Ravenswood is a modern mansion, with a Scriptural inscrip- 

 tion over the principal entrance : " the lord shall pre- 

 serve THY going out AND COMING IN." There is a goodly 

 display here of Pinus, Abies, and their allies ; all of them 

 thriving. We took the pathway winding along the wooded 

 banks of the Tweed. On either side grew the numerous 

 woodland plants frequenting such situations — the wild Straw- 

 berry, Woodruff, Oxalis, Rumex viridis, Bromus hirsutus 

 and giganteus, Geranium dissectum, Marjoram, Sanicle, 

 Myrrhis odorata in one spot, Avens, CirccBa, Veronica 

 arvensis, and such like. The Anomodon viticulosum grew 

 profusely on the rocks, which were a reddish-tinted Grey- 

 wacke and Greywacke slate. Beds of the Mercury were 

 curiously flattened by the drought ; had it been moist weather 

 we would have said they were lodged by rain. The path 

 conducted us to the peninsula, where once the abbey of Old 

 Melrose stood — a calm retreat, flat and grassy, and bordered 

 with full-grown trees, where its apex runs out, causing the 

 Tweed to make a circular bend round it j * and elevated be- 

 hind in a tree-covered bank. On the opposite side of the 

 Tweed, steeply ascending banks enclose this secluded haugh 

 all round, clothed with hanging wood, tree towering over 

 tree ; at the one end, where Gledswood peers out at the top, 

 elm is the principal constituent ; in the middle, scrubby oak 

 with long twisted arms, and a sprinkling of mountain ashes, 

 scarcely hide the nakedness of the soil of the Gait or Goat- 

 heugh, where you can see the rabbits stealing through the 

 opens ; while at the further end, the banks spring sheer up- 

 wards, and the oaken coppice thickens into a dense, leafy 

 screen, with only here and there, low down, a grey cliff 



* •• Quod Tuidi fluminis circumflexu maxima ex parte clauditur." Bede. 



